Month: January 2019

Deep State Follies

by digby

Fox News used to be hardcore “law and order” and they loved the FBI and other federal law enforcement when it was investigating all the people they hate. You know, like Muslims, liberal activists and Democrats. They positively worship the border patrol and ICE. On the other hand, for years they pitched fits about the ATF (Tom Delay called them jack-booted thugs) while guys like Rudy Giuliani were always blatantly partisan in their views. (The ruthless prosecutor and law and order mayor called the agents who returned Elian Gonzales to his father in Cuba “storm troopers.”) And, needless to say, they’ve always had a problem with law enforcement when it focuses on white-collar criminals and Republican crooks like Donald Trump and never more so than today.

This screed from Gregg Jarrett takes it to a new level:

x News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett wants to repeal and replace the FBI.

“This is an all-powerful, out-of-control agency, rogue agency, and frankly it’s time that it be halted in its tracks, reorganized and replaced with a new organization that has legal restraints imposed upon it and accountable to somebody,” he told Sean Hannity on Monday.

Jarrett claimed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, “invented” a counterintelligence case against President Donald Trump “with no probable cause” and “no credible evidence” to support it.

“It is time that the FBI be halted,” Jarrett said:

Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett just called for the FBI to be disbanded over reports that they are investigating Trump

"Frankly, it's time that it be halted in its tracks, reorganized and replaced" pic.twitter.com/szhaOSLOve— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 15, 2019

Jarrett has previously called the FBI “America’s secret police” and said the Mueller investigation is “illegitimate and corrupt.”

I’ve always been skeptical of federal police power in most ways. The possibility that they would involve themselves in partisan politics is always a worry. I get it. They have been used for such purposes in the past (usually on bhalf of the right —COINTELPRO, anyone?) and even though conservatives’ occasional objections have always been self-serving and deeply partisan, we sometimes do find common ground.

This is not one of those times.

I wish we didn’t have a president who has either been the victim of a foreign plot and refuses to admit it or is an out and out traitor, but the evidence suggests we do. And the party that supports him is an accomplice in the cover-up of his crime.

Even if they weren’t actively helping him, the congress has inadequate power to pursue such a case at the level something this monumental requires. Until just this month when Democrats took over one house of Congress it had not had such power. Without some kind of DOJ/FBI investigation into this administration’s incredibly suspicious behavior they would have been given a completely free pass.

Much of our democracy has depended on a certain amount of trust that our president isn’t an imbecile or an outright criminal being blackmailed by a foreign power — or both. Clearly, that trust has been violated so we must rely on the institution of the DOJ, with the help of the intelligence agencies, to develop the case so the congress can do its job of oversight. It’s not a good situation but it’s all we’ve got.

The FBI did not cook this up. What we see Trump and his henchmen do and say in public, before the world, is proof enough that something is very, very wrong. That means we have to extend a little bit of trust to the institutions that are empowered to investigate. There just isn’t any choice except to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s still 2015, before all this happened.

It happened. Those who say it’s all a big hoax are either dumb, lying or living in the past.

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Does Bill Barr get his “facts” from Sean Hannity?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

The New York Times’ Michael Schmidt reported a year ago that back in March of 2017, President Trump was steaming mad that his Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from any inquiry into the Russian interference in the election. He’d ordered his White House counsel Don McGahn to tell Sessions to rescind the recusal:

Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama. 

Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.

We are so inured to the president’s contemptible behavior that such reports elicit a moment of shock and then fade into the next shameful utterance and we all move on. This comment had a bit of a longer life simply because for the next 20 months, Trump was so upset that Sessions hadn’t “protected him” in the Russia investigation that he tortured his Attorney General publicly with constant insults and degrading comments, trying to get him to quit. He finally had his lackey John Kelly fire him on the morning after the midterm election.

Trump never tried to hide that he was upset his Attorney General didn’t properly “protect him.” He was quite open about it. And like the dying field of desiccated potted plants they are, the GOP congress was completely silent about the fact that the President of the United States believes the Attorney General’s job is to ensure that the Department of Justice turns a blind eye to evidence of his criminality. They didn’t care that Trump’s obsession with being “protected” by the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country might just be a hint that he had some serious legal exposure. Instead, they stepped in to protect him themselves, flogging threadbare alternate investigations into Hillary Clinton, throwing up smoke screens about rogue FBI agents and otherwise ignoring the plain fact that Trump’s whining about Sessions recusal was tantamount to a confession.

No one should be surprised then, that William Barr, Trump’s nominee to permanently replace Sessions, will not commit to doing that even though there is ample reason to believe he should. In the first day of confirmation hearings, Barr claimed that the Attorney General has no obligation to follow the recommendations of the DOJ ethics office in such matters and when informed that most nominees for the job have agreed to do it anyway, he just shrugged and said he would make the decision himself.
That was, of course, a condition of taking the job and he knew it.

He also claimed that he would not fire Mueller except for good cause and added a very clever little flourish designed to put to rest any concerns that despite Trump’s hundreds of tweets to the contrary, the president is not concerned with Mueller’s integrity. Barr said he told the president he is friends with Mueller and that Mueller is a straight shooter  — which we are supposed to believe the man who ran around wailing “where’s my Roy Cohn” took at face value. Sure he did.

Barr is not particularly well-informed about many of the issues surrounding this investigation but he was definitely up on the Special Counsel regulations and knows that, contrary to the common assumption,  a Mueller Report would not go directly to the public and would instead be submitted in confidence to the Attorney General who will decide what the Congress and the public will be allowed to see. And he indicated that he had no intention of giving up that prerogative no matter how much he admires his good friend Bob Mueller.

That had  Democratic officials more than a little bit  concerned:

I wrote about Barr’s potential to be a straight shooter himself, in the mode of Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski a couple of months ago. That may still be possible. There are plenty of observers  in the media who seem to believe that Barr showed he was an independent guy who would call it like he sees it. But as I mentioned in that earlier piece there are also unfortunate signs that Barr may be unduly influenced by the right-wing fever swamps, even to the extent of buying into conspiracy theories promulgated on Fox News.

Questions have been raised about what Bill Barr told us for a story in 2017. Here is his full email from then responding to our request for comment. We’re grateful he replied and hope this clarifies any confusion. pic.twitter.com/xTCsJSpic2

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) January 15, 2019

Somehow that doesn’t strike me as something a “just the facts, m’am” kind of guy would say. But again, maybe he’s just been foolishly relying on Sean Hannity for his news, as so many Republicans do, and will take a deep breath once he sees all the evidence his friend Bob has gathered.

As luck would have it, we all got to see a little more of it as of yesterday. Mueller dropped a big court filing about all of Manafort’s lies to the Special Counsel just as Barr was finishing up his testimony. Much of it is redacted but what we can see indicates once again that there is more to this story than we, or Bill Barr, know.  The biggest news is that Manafort’s involvement with the administration allegedly extends beyond his tenure with the campaign and into the presidency itself.

There is another investigation into campaign finance going on presumably having to do with Trump’s Super Pac Rebuilding America Now which was involved in some kind of financial shenanigans with Manafort. And apparently, Manafort lied to the prosecutors about his involvement in hiring for the administration during the Trump transition. One can only wonder who he was recommending and why. There’s more about Manafort’s association with the former FSB operative Konstantin Kilimnik and the filing references “other investigations” the details of which are redacted. And the court extended Manafort’s former associate Rick Gates’ sentencing hearing for another two months yesterday as well, indicating that he’s still cooperating in the investigation.

If William Barr is confirmed, as it seems likely he will be unless something dramatic happens before the vote, it appears that he’s got his work cut out for him getting up to speed on the facts. If he’s been getting his information up until now from Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, he’s going to be in for quite a shock.

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Kush family values

by digby

Who are these people? Who are these people?Chris Christie’s new book talks about Jared’s lovely family who are just as much a bunch of low lives as the Trumps. Jared held a grudge against poor Chris for putting his father in jail.  Here’s a reminder of what he did:

The elder Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law Bill Schulder, then filmed them having sex in a motel and sent the tape to his own sister, Esther. The bizarre plot was an attempt to blackmail the Schulders into keeping their silence about Bill’s knowledge of Charles’s fraudulent activities.

Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 charges and served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama.

In one of the most visceral passages of the book, Christie recounts for the first time how Jared Kushner badmouthed him to Trump in April 2016, pleading with his father-in-law not to make Christie transition chairman. Remarkably, he did so while Christie was in the room.

“He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up,” Christie writes. “Just a lot of feelings – very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years.”

Kushner went on to tell Trump that it wasn’t fair his father spent so long in prison. He insisted the sex tape and blackmailing was a family matter that should have been kept away from federal authorities: “This was a family matter, a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis.”

Huh??? The sick piece of work set up his own brother-in-law and then blackmailed his own sister into keeping quiet in a federal criminal fraud investigation. Let “the Rabbis” deal with this? What the hell?

No wonder Ivanka married him. He’s as much of a low-life as her daddy.

This family of immoral morons is running the most powerful nation on earth.

And they’re being fluffed and propped up every single day by the Republican Party — including Chris Christie who is only doing this out of personal malice and spite — because he’s a thug too.

Not one of these people has even a thimbleful of integrity.

Selling America for parts – Part the nth
by Tom Sullivan

Oakland stolen car chop shop.

For a second day, thousands of striking Los Angeles teachers from United Teachers Los Angeles marched Tuesday in the streets of downtown:

The teachers are asking for increased pay, smaller class sizes and the hiring of more support staff, such as nurses, counselors and librarians. Many of the demonstrators’ picket signs reflected those demands as they gathered at the intersection of East First and San Pedro streets, which were closed to traffic

The Associated Press reports teachers from the independent Accelerated Schools charter network walked off the job in solidarity with UTLA teachers. Their contract is separately negotiated.

Los Angeles teachers are not only striking over their contracts, but over encroachment into public education by the charter school industry. Under the rubric of choice, charters suck tax dollars away from traditional public schools. UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl believes the unregulated growth of charters represents an “existential threat” to public education:

“We don’t need to have the grow-as-fast-as-you-can business model that’s promoted by charter school billionaires,” he said. “We need to invest in our existing schools.”

“We educators know in our hearts that this moment in history will never be forgotten by our students,” wrote Leslie Hemstreet in a letter to the editor.

“We are modeling the behavior of citizens who have decided to take a stand against the privatization of our public schools. We are protesting against those who are eager to make a profit from the services we offer.

“We are saying no to turning education into big business. Please stand with us at this historic moment.”

In These Times places privatization at the heart of strikers’ concerns:

Because there’s so much at stake, the battle doesn’t really end with the strike. It’s also tied up with a quietly radical proposal looming from school superintendent and former investment banker Austin Beutner, which would divide the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) into 32 “networks.” Critics call the plan a blueprint to close neighborhood schools, pour money into charters and decentralize opposition to privatization. Beutner has even brought in a consultant, Cami Anderson, who tested this model while superintendent of schools in Newark, New Jersey.

Plus, an upcoming school board special election will decide the balance of power between charter supporters and those backed by UTLA, and whether the network model has majority support to go forward. You cannot disaggregate the strike from these other issues. Union leaders see LAUSD as under attack, and are using all means at their disposal to stem the tide.

Bill Raden of Capital & Main explains the how network plan would work. Say it with me: Run public education like a business. (Emphasis in original):

Called the “portfolio model,” it means each of the 32 L.A. networks would be overseen like a stock portfolio. A portfolio manager would keep the “good” schools and dump the “bad” by turning them over to a charter or shutting them down much like a bum stock. Why that should fare any better than a short-lived LAUSD reform in the 1990s that also divided the district into small, semi-autonomous clusters but failed to budge academic performance remains unclear. The changes in Newark included neighborhood school closures, mass firings of teachers and principals, a spike in new charters and a revolt by parents that drove out former Newark supe — and current L.A. consultant — Cami Anderson.

Even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller explores ways in which Russia works to undermine the United States and NATO, private investors are working behind the scenes to undermine public … anything in this country. Social contracts : bad. Private contracts : good. For the investor class, the tragedy of the commons is when they don’t get a cut from it. They are still trying to sell off America for parts. Like Russian oligarchs, they are relentless. Schools, highways, prisons, V.A. health services, even wars.

Your drinking water, too. In These Times reports Aqua America, having failed to privatize the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA), announced in October it was buying Peoples Gas, a local gas company. But why? asks Doug Shields:

For months, Peoples Gas had been selling the city on what it was calling a strategic public-private partnership. The company would replace aging lines and build a massive new treatment facility to boot — somehow without raising rates. As you might expect, the details were scarce.

Shields writes:

There’s no doubt that Pittsburgh’s water system needs serious attention. The scope of the problem might lead some to think that private water companies are the only ones that know how to turn things around. But private companies are not charities. When a for-profit corporation promises to erase debt and replace aging water pipes, we should ask, “What’s the catch?”

With billions of dollars needed to overhaul public works projects like water or sewer systems, the privatizer’s pitch can be enticing: We’ll make the investments to deliver 21st century service, and we’ll relieve you of the burden of ongoing maintenance. But the record shows that when private companies take over public water systems, service can actually deteriorate, and those costly upgrades that were promised wind up hitting your pocketbook for many years into the future.

There is no free lunch. Public services require public investments through taxes and public commitments via municipal bonds. Promises by entrepreneurs to deliver public services faster, better, cheaper for a profit deserve all the skepticism due late-night ads for weight-loss drugs and testosterone-boosters. Problem is, the people who fall for those also fall for hucksters’ promises to give you more for less in public services through the miracle of the marketplace.

Bridge for Sale — Manhattan to Brooklyn — Cheep 

by tristero

If, for a moment, you believe that Barr:

1. Won’t obstruct Mueller
2. Will stand in the way of Trump pardoning anyone
3. Will release anything but the most anodyne redaction of the Mueller investigation
4. Will not make life hell for anyone trying to hold this president and his administration accountable

If you believe any of this… see the title of this post.

You say you’ve never seen any fake news?

by digby

This is the type of thing that makes the rounds all over right wing media every day. It isn’t usually rebutted quite this clearly:

I never said this by the way… I don’t know where it came from.

However the trip to the White House was awesome! https://t.co/dhYzZpSNUD— Trevor Lawrence (@Trevorlawrencee) January 15, 2019

Who knows where it came from? It could be anything from right-wing operatives to Russian bots to a 400 guy in his bed.

I wonder if he’s going to get dragged by the right wing…

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Ivanka is “helping to manage” nomination processes

by digby

I’m not sure what that means exactly. But the quotes in this report prove to me that she was almost certainly actually being considered:

White House adviser Ivanka Trump is going to help pick the new World Bank president, but she herself is not under consideration for the position, the White House said.

Trump will work with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to help manage the U.S. nomination process, according to the statement, which said it was “false” that she was under consideration for the role.

“Secretary Mnunchin and Chief of Staff Mulvaney have asked Ivanka Trump to help manage the U.S. nomination process as she’s worked closely with the World Bank’s leadership for the past two years – however, reports that she is under consideration are false,” White House spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said in the statement.

The Financial Times last week reported Trump was one of multiple possible contenders for the U.S. nomination.

The report sparked backlash from multiple lawmakers and public figures, including Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer, who claimed the move would be an act of nepotism.

Ivanka has been working with the World Bank on a woman’s empowerment fund. It has been controversial because of her massive conflicts of interest, but she managed to finesse them and her initiative is considered, on the whole, a positive program.

None of that means she is qualified to run the World Bank. And her leading role in a fraudulent international real estate con known as The Trump Organization, makes her impossibly exposed to blackmail. So it’ a ridiculous notion. But it isn’t the first time her name has been floated for a big job like that.  Someone clearly has the ability to tell Trump that he can’t promote his daughter to UN Ambassador and President of the World Bank. I wonder who that is?

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Newt was never any good at srategery

by digby

I tweeted this last night:

I'm watching Gingrich on Hannity advise GOPers in the House to get 40 or 50 Democrats together and beat Pelosi to end the shutdown. Because back in the day they used to be able to do that. Hahahaha#expert pic.twitter.com/PD8CC1jY4c— digby (@digby56) January 15, 2019

It sounds like Trump was listening. Guess what?

President Trump asked a group of moderate House Democrats to meet with him on Tuesday, looking to drive a wedge between them and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). No dice, said the Democrats.

White House officials scrambled to find moderate House Democrats willing to meet with Trump Tuesday morning after the President demanded the meeting from aides.

But Democrat after Democrat turned them down, uninterested in giving Trump a chance to berate them, try to embarrass them or try to get them to split with House Democratic leadership and entertain offers to reopen the government while funding a border wall that are anathema to most of the party.

“Today, the President offered both Democrats and Republicans the chance to meet for lunch at the White House. Unfortunately, no Democrats will attend. The President looks forward to having a working lunch with House Republicans to solve the border crisis and reopen the government,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement late Tuesday morning.

Invitees who turned down Trump include Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), the co-chairs of the moderate Blue Dog Democratic coalition. Murphy had an important Ways & Means Committee meeting she couldn’t skip — but both made it clear they’re not [going.]

“I have attended meetings with the President at the White House before, but a scheduling conflict prevented me from accepting this invitation. However, I continue to believe the Senate should pass and the President should sign the bills reopening government that the House already passed. As a former national security specialist at the Pentagon, I look forward to having a meaningful, bipartisan discussion about the best way to secure our country,” Murphy said in a statement to TPM.

Correa’s response was even more direct.

“Congressman Correa welcomes the opportunity to talk with the President about border security, as soon as the government is reopened,” a Correa spokesman told Roll Call.

The Democrats’ move is a show of party unity in the face of Trump’s ongoing demands that the Democrats cave and give him money for his long-sought border wall in order to reopen the government. The ongoing partial shutdown is the longest in U.S. history, and with Trump and Democrats refusing to budge, there are no signs that the shutdown will end anytime soon.

The White House announced nine House Republicans will join Trump for the meeting. Most are fairly conservative, in spite of Trump’s promise to invite moderates. The only members on the list of particular note are Reps. John Katko (R-NY) and Rodney Davis (R-IL), who are among the handful of Republicans who have been voting with Democrats on bills to reopen the government without funding the wall.

Interesting that one of the reasons they won’t attend is becuse the president treats them like shit in meetings. I guess somebody in the government has some pride.

Also, the Dems are hanging to gether, which is new. Back in Newtie’s day there were many Democrats he could count on to make a big show of being “bipartisan” in exactly these situations. It seems they’ve learned something over the years:

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Henchman in the hot seat

by digby

How shocking is it that Trump’s main henchman in the congress turns out to possibly be personally involved in Trump’s corrupt foreign entanglements? Not shocking at all:

The Special Counsel’s Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are scrutinizing a meeting involving former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, one-time National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dozens of foreign officials, according to three sources familiar with the investigations.

The breakfast event, which was first reported by The Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish paper, took place at 8:30 a.m. at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, 2017—days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. About 60 people were invited, including diplomats from governments around the world, according to those same sources.

The breakfast has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as part of their probe into whether the Trump inaugural committee misspent funds and if donors tried to buy influence in the White House. The existence of that probe was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Special Counsel’s Office is also looking at the breakfast as part of its investigation into whether foreigners contributed money to the Trump inaugural fund and PAC by possibly using American intermediaries, as first reported by The New York Times. Robert Mueller’s team has asked Flynn about the event, according to two sources familiar with the Special Counsel’s Office questioning.

Nunes, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, has been perhaps Trump’s most important congressional ally over the last two years. After serving on Trump’s transition team, Nunes became a vigorous defender of the president against federal and congressional inquiries. The California Republican pushed a misleading memo alleging misconduct in the FBI investigation of Trump’s associates that the bureau said contained “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Now Nunes—a key figure behind the right-wing counter narrative that Trump is at the mercy of a “Deep State” conspiracy—finds at least one meeting that he himself attended under the special counsel’s scrutiny.

Met w/General Flynn,who will assume the position of National Security Advisor, and other officials at a working breakfast in Washington D.C.

— Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu) January 18, 2017

The breakfast gathering took place the night after the Global Chairman’s Dinner—one of the inauguration’s most exclusive events, set up so the incoming president can meet the foreign diplomatic corps. Some of those who attended the dinner also attended the Trump Hotel breakfast, two individuals with direct knowledge of the events told The Daily Beast. Country officials invited to the breakfast included Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Japan, Angola and others. Former Kazakh Ambassador Kairat Umarov attended the breakfast, as did two senior Qatari officials.

Pluvious Group, a consultancy that raised money for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, helped with the event’s organization, according to two sources with knowledge of the breakfast. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nunes’s behavior has always been curious. Nobody went the extra mile as he did. While he was always a conservative Republican, in the past he wasn’t a Freedom Caucus style wingnut. When Trump came along, he changed into a fanatic. And he became Trump’s most dependable henchman.

Maybe it was more than personal affection that made him do it?

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Please. Trump is obstructing justice every single day. In public.

by digby

The most powerful man on earth threatening witnesses and dangling pardons on his twitter feed makes that obvious. I can’t believe there’s any doubt!

Elizabeth Holzman was a House Judiciary Committee member during the Watergate hearings. She takes issue with Barr’s assertions with respect to presidents obstructing justice:

William P. Barr… misrepresents key facts of the impeachment proceedings against Richard M. Nixon in 1974 in order to limit the grounds for prosecuting President Trump. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, I was a witness to that history and I know that Barr is not accurate.

Barr claims in his memo that presidents can’t be prosecuted for obstruction of justice on a basis of acts that don’t strictly involve impairment of evidence. Only inherently “bad acts” — such as destroying evidence or tampering with witnesses — are prosecutable, he asserts.

According to Barr, when the House Judiciary Committee drafted its articles of impeachment in July 1974, “the acts of obstruction alleged against” Nixon “were all such bad acts involving impairment of evidence.”

Barr is flat-out wrong. We had numerous grounds for Nixon’s impeachment for obstructing and impeding the investigation into the Watergate break-in that did not involve evidence impairment in the narrow way Barr defines the term. I will cite just two.

One ground for impeachment was that Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was seeking White House tapes of presidential conversations. Whether the president had the power to fire Cox was irrelevant to the impeachment. Instead, the issue was that the president could not use his power to undermine, or halt, an investigation into his own possible criminal conduct or that of his aides. Although the committee explicitly was not bound by the obstruction-of-justice statute, it still viewed Cox’s firing as an effort to squelch the criminal investigation. As such, it was an abuse of power and an obstruction — and impeachable. It is worth noting that Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey — for insisting on continuing the Russia investigation — seems to fall squarely under this precedent.

Another example of Barr’s revisionist history turns on Nixon’s use of presidential pardons. One of the grounds for Nixon’s impeachment was that he authorized offers of presidential pardons to the Watergate burglars to keep them from telling prosecutors about the involvement of higher-ups in the break-in. While no one contested the president’s broad pardon powers, the committee voted to impeach Nixon for using those pardon powers to interfere with the criminal investigation. Trump seems to have similarly used those powers with regard to his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and is reported to have made or authorized pardon offers to other aides for purposes of gaining silence. Here again, Trump’s conduct appears to replicate the impeachable misdeeds of Nixon.

As troubling as Barr’s misguided and clumsy attempt to rewrite history is his broader effort to elevate the president into a kind of unaccountable monarch. This is part of a quiet Republican campaign over the past generation to locate in the Constitution grounds for a powerful “unitary executive” who is virtually above the law. For Barr, presidential acts such as offering pardons or firing prosecutors cannot be prosecuted even if they have the effect of interfering with an investigation of the president. The reason, according to Barr, is that the president’s underlying motives in offering the pardons or in firing the officials may not be scrutinized. Why can’t they be scrutinized? For Barr, allowing such questioning undermines the very foundation of the presidency, and the executive branch of government.

But merely to describe Barr’s position is to show its absurdity. Take the case of Nixon, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator by the Watergate grand jury during his presidency. Neither the presidency nor the country fell apart as a result. Moreover, there is nothing in the Constitution that puts the president beyond questioning or accountability. (The framers knew how to prevent questioning when they wanted to — they provided that members of Congress “shall not be questioned in any other place” for any speech or debate in the House or Senate.) The Constitution is very plain that a president may be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office. The Constitution doesn’t hem that provision of accountability at all — there is no language restricting the scope of the prosecution or of the investigation. Indeed, the framers wanted to make it crystal clear that even impeachment was not a substitute for prosecution. Barr’s theory is derived from thin air, or maybe not even that.

Barr indicated to today that issuing pardons for corrupt reasons would be a crime. He didn’t say which one which raises the question of how it can be completely ina president’s prerogative to fire someone in the executive branch who happens to be investigating him while it would be a crime to pardon someone who might testify against him. Indeed, the pardon power actually is right there in the constitution and it’s undeniably plenary. So I don’t get it.

Anyway, Holzman makes a good point. And we should be mindful of the fact that two GOP presidents in the last 40 years have been credibly accused of impeding investigations into their own corruption. Two others have issued (and one is currently threatening to issue) pardons to help cover up serious crimes committed by the president and/or members of the administration.

This is just in the last half-century. It’s all come from one party which is proving itself over and over again, each time it is elected to high office, to be a corrupt enterprise. Donald Trump didn’t invent this stuff. He’s just the over-the-top, half-wit, third generation of such GOP leaders. (It turns out that phenomenon isn’t confined to monarchies…) It’s clearly a serious institutional problem in the Republican Party that’s now evolved into a crisis in which an openly criminal, inept — and possibly compromised — boob leads the nation.

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